


The Producers

by orphan_account



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, friendship thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 01:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10934091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Diaz parents are enjoying a well-deserved anniversary trip this weekend, leaving Star and Marco to confront their feelings alone. Will they survive? We can only pray!





	The Producers

Star Butterfly sighed. For anyone else, the prospect of a weekend alone with their best friend would be exciting, or cheerful, or at the very least, positive. Yet here she found herself dreading the departure of her earthly surrogate parents. A weekend alone with Marco…so much could go wrong. She wasn’t prepared to be alone with her crush just yet, even if he was (as he so often was) completely oblivious. Marco still thought of her as his best friend. Better to keep that alive than to risk it all on him reciprocating her feelings, right? So then why was she so uncomfortable being just friends?  
Of course, there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Rafael and Angie had spent months planning their anniversary; they had left five meals for the children in the fridge, and a list of phone numbers to call should any issue arise. This was their time to be together, who was Star Butterfly to deny them that? Surely, she was in no position to stop all that so that she didn’t feel uncomfortable? She would just have to power through.  
Presently, Star’s aimless musings were interrupted. A knock reeled her back into the real world. It was followed by that all too familiar voice of her housemate turned friend turned crush. “Star? Dinner’s ready.” Of course. The Diaz parents had left them pre-prepared meals, and strongly encouraged the children to follow a certain plan of activities so as to avoid burning down the entire neighborhood. This too, had been left by the Diaz Parents, held to the fridge by a magnet. For tonight it recommended a movie that Rafael had left for them, for which Marco held reservations. Star had insisted they watch it.  
“Coming Marco!” Star replied, as she pulled herself up, and took a moment to regret her past decisions before she pulled open the door to her royal (expanded) bedroom. On the other side stood Marco, wearing an apron, gloves, and now a reassuring smile. “Y’know,” he said “if you’re not up for anything tonight, that’s fine. I can bring your food up here, and forget about the whole movie thing.”  
Star would have loved to sit in her room alone and think about something else. Yet she found herself saying “Ah, come on Marco! How long’s it been since we just hung out together for a night?”  
Marco gave her a puzzled look. “...about three days, give or take?” he said, but to no real consequence. Star was already out the door.  
“Let’s go!” she called from the landing. Marco had no option but to trail behind her, as he always did.  
Star, of course, made very little sense to anyone. Yet recently her inconsistencies had taken on a new, and to Marco worrisome (though to Marco many things were worrisome which are not worthy of note) aspect. She had always obeyed the laws of physics like Oskar Greason obeyed the laws of the road, yet recently her absurd inconsistencies seemed to have found a way into her very emotions. One moment she was the same old energetic self, the next she wanted to avoid everyone and stay in her room all day. This strangeness had been growing since the night she lost her spell book, yet Marco had only noticed it after the Love Sentence concert which Star had prematurely left. It made no sense, excepting the unthinkable. Of course not, Why would she? After she had set him up with Jackie?  
None of it made any sense. All he knew was that their relationship was strained, and he desperately wanted it to not be. He wanted to turn back the clocks to a better time, when things had made sense, he thought, then caught himself. For things to make sense, to be “normal”, Star would have to leave, and that was far worse than this. Somehow the regular life of Marco Diaz, pre-Star seemed impossibly far away and soul-crushingly dull. In fact, it was business as usual for a multitude of teens across the United States, and was about 6 months away from the current moment. Yet those six months, and that new world which she had brought into his life were worth more to him than all the years prior. It made no sense, but neither did anything else, he supposed.  
Marco resolved to let it go and focus on the movie. Just act like a regular old friendship Thursday, never mind the fact that it was Saturday. That made it alright. That made it two friends being friends, being warm and open and comfortable and free together. In fact, this feeling was another one of Star’s novelties. The closest he’d come to anything like it before had been when he was younger and his parents were his best friends. Friends didn’t have to be all that; Ferguson and Alfonzo certainly hadn’t been. But when they were, it was certainly a bonus. He supposed that was why the strife and awkwardness which now obstructed this friendship was so frustrating.  
And there it was again. No matter what he tried to do, his mind seemed to come back to that, which only served to make things more frustrating and terrifying than they already were. It was a vicious cycle; it was destroying him from the inside; he had to say something, but of course if he did, it might get even worse. There was nothing to do but immerse himself in the movie and hope to god he could hide from his mind, at least long enough that Star didn’t notice.  
Not that she would have, of course. She was herself trapped in her own fears. What could strike fear in the heart of the carefree princess? Who but Marco Diaz. Overwhelmed and confused by her feelings for the boy next to her, she retreated into herself, and pondered her situation. Words came to her walled-off mind to describe the situation. Words like pathetic, and weak, and failure, and loser, of course. And then a stranger arrived, leaving cracks in her impromptu fortification: opportunity. Opportunity? Could this weekend be? He was already with Jackie, what could Star possibly do here?  
Star’s ponderings and Marco’s terrors were promptly disrupted by the hand of god, or rather, the hand of the producers. The thoroughly overexaggerated and utterly un-relatable characters on the television scene had made heavily dramatized confessions, and followed this by leaving the complaining about their feelings business for the standing around kissing business. Their friends were shocked by this career change, and stood watching the two do their business with faces like underwhelming Halloween masks. Obscene sounds radiated from the Television for a solid fifteen minutes as these two characters grew to dominate the smooch-market, and then a discount singer sang a discount song over the discount credits.  
If it had been at all possible for the silence in the room to deepen, it would have. The two conscious inhabitants of the Diaz residence were as alert as cats which have just heard the word “food”, followed by a can opener turning. Was it fear which drove them, or something else? If it was fear, why were they now moving closer together? Why was her hand now on his? Why was he now turning to face her? That word flashed again in Star’s mind: opportunity.  
“So, h-how, bout that movie?” Marco managed to free the words from the quarantine his anxiety had imposed on his mouth. There was no response. Desperately trying to save face, his body slightly warmer than the surface of the sun, Marco began again. “…. wanna watch another?” he said meekly. Star simply stared at him, enthralled, her mind in a great many possible worlds, none of which was the current one. After several seconds, Marco’s embarrassment turned to confusion. “…Star?” he waved a hand in a terribly cliché attempt to commandeer the Princess’s focus.  
The kissing business is like the not dying business: everyone is greatly desirous of it, and some inarguably do it better than others. I am by no means licensed to critique such things, thanks to lack both of experience, and of formal schooling, but if I were for some reason trusted with the judgement of Star Butterfly and Marco Diaz’s kiss in that moment, I would say this: “The kiss, this evening, on the couch, in front of the TV, at the Diaz household, was a promising one. It was well timed, it was well carried out, and it left one with a certain sense of emotional weight to it. I should very much like to get in touch with the producers, in the hopes of seeing if such a kiss may expect sequels.”


End file.
